MOSCOW, November 3. /TASS/. The story of US national Daniel Martindale, who provided data about the Ukrainian military to the Russian army for two years, marks a crucial change in the American people’s minds, Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, a human rights activist and member of the Russian Civic Chamber, told TASS.

Yaroshenko, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the US on drug trafficking charges, was exchanged for US national Trevor Reed and returned home on April 27, 2022.

"I think that US society’s mindset has been undergoing a crucial change for quite a while. When I was in the US, I could see that the American people realize that the US government is misleading them in terms of its foreign policy and aggression against other countries and nations," Yaroshenko pointed out. "This particular case makes it clear that apart from mercenaries fighting for the Ukrainian armed forces, there also are US nationals who support our country," he added.

Yaroshenko noted that signs of the American people’s dissatisfaction with the country’s domestic and foreign policies had been clear for over ten years.

US citizen Daniel Martindale moved to Ukraine on February 11, 2022. Having proactively established contact with Russian security services, he started to report the coordinates of Ukrainian military facilities. The information obtained from him was repeatedly used to hit Ukraine’s military infrastructure, equipment and troops. On October 27, Russian service members performing combat missions near the village of Bogoyavlenka in the Donetsk People’s Republic took him out of the combat zone and brought him to the city of Donetsk.